Help with my new humidor

You could do the "light test." Turn on a flash light and put it in your humi, turn off the lights in the room and see if you can see any light coming out. Another one is the dollar bill test. Shut the lid on the middle of a dollar bill, try to pull it out. You should be able to pull it out, BUT, If you can pull it out with ease, you don't have a good seal. Hope that helps.

I also heard it is good to take a cloth damp with distilled water, and slightly wipe the inside of your humi to help things go smoothly.

Also when you get it up to the right RH only add a few sticks at a time. Might wanna test your hygrometer too.

Cutter, how big is your humi and what quantity of beads do you have in the containers? You may have too many ounces of beads for the size humi. Also, this time of year is may be hard to get the RH up much past 62 to 65%.

I would not wipe down the inside with water. There is a chance you could warp the wood if it gets too damp.

I keep my humi between 62 and 65%. I think the highest it has gotten in a long time was around 68%. The fuller you keep it the steadier the RH will be.

Also, keeping a humidifier in the room your humi is in helps a lot. If you keep the humidity in the room at about 45percent it helps prevent that shock of dry air to your humi when you open it. 45% is pretty comfortable RH for a room. I'm from florida, the more humid the better, I have cranked my room up to 65% RH! This time of year my room would be at20percent humidity with out my humidifier.

You can get them for about 30bucks at your local CVS or Walgreens.

I don't work with beads at the moment but I can offer up my experience with the sponge and analog hygrometer set-up.

When I got my 40ct humi the instructions mentioned that the hygrometer was pre-calibrated, all I did after that was VERY LIGHTLY wipe the insides with a rag that was damp with distilled water, by lightly I mean just enough to see the wood inside change a shade or two. Next I soaked the sponge container and let it sit for a day closed up, next day i resoaked the sponge and let it sit another day, after that I added 25 cigars to it and since then I have had as many as 35 and as little as 20 in there at all times. I have never had a rh problem, I have taken my hygrometer into the shower just to see if it jumped and it did, putting it back I noticed that it went right back down to 68-70 rh.

I got an offer from the local pro at the cigar store to do some form of digital calibration and comparison to my analog, I will make sure to post the results. Moral of the story I guess is: Keep it simple.

Cutter, good luck with your problems, hate to hear about quality smokes being wasted.

If your humi is new three days is nowhere long enough to break it in. The lining of the box is dried before it is shipped and usually takes 1 to 3 weeks to remoisten.

What you can do now is get a piece of tupperware and put a couple ounces of your beads in a little bowl with your sticks. This will make a nice temp home while you break in yout 75 count box.

Be patient, put a bowl of distilled water in your humi and let it sit there for a couple weeks. At the end of two weeks remove the water and replace with your beads and introduce mabey 10-20 cigars. After your humi is able to remain at a constant 62-72% humidity add more cigars and repeat until you have a conditioned humidor with all your cigars.

Hope it works out for you. I didn't condition my first humidor and had a nightmare of a time trying to get it going before I figured it out.

When I got my humi, I was told by the guys at Peretti's to soak down the inside cedar with distilled, and leave the wet cloth in the bottom for a few days. This worked perfectly. I had a steady humi from the start. There was no warping of the wood either.

I have heard a lot of people doing it like that too, or wetting the inside with a rag or sponge.... I would just recommend caution in doing this...as with any wood, a sudden influx of moisture could cause warping or at the least staining....just my thoughts on that method...to me it is worth a few extra days with a bowl of water to avoid the possibility of damaging an expensive investment.
~S

i just got my new 500 count humi in on friday, i put a bowl of distilled water in the bottom, draped a hand towel dampenned with distilled over the cedar dividers, and closed it up...i sat the 4 cedar trays on top of my running humidifier in my bedroom for half a day, put them in the humi and by the end of day two the humi was completely seasoned, i couldnt believe it...i had to keep adding sticks just to get the humidity down, its rock solid at 65 at the top and 68 at the bottom since yesterday afternoon...

the vicksburg 500 count humi from bargainhumidors.com is a STEAL...it IS solid mahogony, spanish cedar insider...very nice

I have stained a humi in my past with the wipe down method.

Cigars take time to age and time to smoke...take some time to humidify your humi properly and you run no risks.

When seasoning a new humi, should I wipe down the inside with distiled water or not? Also should I use the Boveda humidity packs?

i would not wipe it down, i wiped down my previous humi and also stained it, which i could really care less about cause its just the cedar and it just turns a lil bit reddish, but you run the risk of making the grains swell thus getting ruff, which isnt good for your wrappers. just put a good size bowl of distilled water and perhaps a damp cloth of some sort in their draped over some dividers so it has limited contact with the box and see how that works...

Looks like there is a lot of back and forth over the wiping question.

I wiped to condition mine. Then I got a mold problem (not from wiping, I think, I just failed to use propylene glycol), and wiped again with rubbing alcohol to kill any hidden spores. I then reconditioned with another distilled water wipedown. No problems on any of them. Achieved very steady humidities very quickly (1-2 days) with this method.

I think the secret is a DAMP towel, not saturated. The wood does darken slightly, but should NOT have surface moisture sit on it for any extended period. The only way you should get warping is if one area remains significantly wetter than others over an extended time period. This produces a force difference, and actually bends the grain in the wood.

My father is an accomplished woodworker, and has even taken a pro class on the topic of humidity accomodation in fine furniture. The secret is to avoid large moisture gradients, to pay attention to grain directions at joints, and to allow for expansions when the span of wood is long enough to warrant it. The second two should be taken care of by the humi builder, and the humi should be designed to withstand fairly high moisture gradients, since you expect to have ~70% inside and as low as ~10% outside. You just have to make sure you don't SOAK the wood.

As far as staining the wood, it is possible, but if there are no contaminants on the wood surface, and you wipe down evenly, you should get even darkening if any. If one area darkens too much more than others, that means it is accepting moisture more readily, and that is probably not a good thing when you want even moisture exchange all around. The same thing can occur when using woodstain, and the solution is to make sure you wipe evenly, and that the wood is sanded clean of glue and foriegn (such as finger) oils. If there is a grain change, such as at a joint, you can get a color differential, but I usually think this adds to the beauty of well constucted furniture.

My .02!

it never worked right

I have had one for about 2 years now it always seems to read high 85-90%. It is not a very $$ one but i think after reading some of these post i will do some things different.

cutter said:

dollar test was ok except for the back left corner. I could pull it out fairly easily there.

PS if there is a bad seal is there anything to do except to send it back?

Click to expand...

Yes send it back!
Why mess with it?
Just trouble you don't need!